As may have become clear, I loathe Boris Johnson and all that he stands for.

Via The F-Word, Boris Johnson has said that he will not be funding the three rape crisis centres that he promised during his mayoral election campaign. Oh, the shock. I may swoon.

In an astounding level of arrogance, he’s also – in a different article, and regarding the possibility his serving as Prime Minister – said, “if like Cincinnatus I were to be called from my plough, then obviously it would be wrong of me not to help out.”

A rather telling little sentence there, starting with the reminder of his privileged classical education, which presumably the journalists do not share. It seems they don’t own a single streak of curiosity between them either, since if they had, they might have found out that Cincinnatus was a Roman statesman who was nominated dictator when Rome faced war, and who resigned immediately afterwards. I am unsurprised that Johnson conflates the ideas of “prime minister” and “dictator”, but suggest that the honourable gentleman (as House of Commons parlance would have him) would not, in fact, resign the instance his presence was no longer required. In fact, I’m certain he would not, because I cannot see for one moment how his presence is required as Mayor of London, and yet, there he stays.

Moving back to the original F-Word article, we see that Johnson has a press release out on the subject of violence against women. For the good of my sanity, I too am going to refrain from commenting thoroughly on this. I will, however, leave you with this thought:

The second paragraph of the press release starts with this sentence: “when elected last year the Mayor pledged to make London safer for all Londoners.”

Indeed. Let us not forget that this is the man who rushed to the defense of Carol Thatcher when she referred to a black man as a “golliwog”. Let us not forget that this is the man in charge of London, a city that, at the last census, was home to 2,068,888 people of one ethnic minority or another. I’m sure they feel very included. Just like women do now.

The weight-loss diets were bad enough, but what on earth gave you the idea that we are the kind of website that would link to your despicable stalking site? Feel free to crawl under the nearest rock, and may your deity of choice smite you in a cruel and unusual way.

Long answer: No, it isn’t, douchebag. It isn’t, it never has been and it never will be. Why? Because people have died, and continue to die because of it. Needlessly and horrifically. Racism is never funny, like sexism and ablism and ageism are never funny, like homophobia and transphobia and xenophobia are never funny, like any other form of discrimination that I’ve missed are never funny, because people have died.

An Indian man, Gregory Fernandes, was killed in a racist attack in 2007. His attackers pleaded guilty to manslaughter in February this year.

A 62 year-old disabled woman, Jennifer Macaree, was left to die in her car after she was stabbed repeatedly. This was just two weeks ago.

A transwoman, Robyn Browne, was murdered in 1997 , while she was working as a prostitute. Her alleged murderer, James Hopkins, is pleading not guilty.

Michael Causer, a gay teenager, was battered to death in July last year. James O’Connor has pleaded guilty to his murder.

And that is such a tiny sample of the people that discrimination has targeted. Those people were all in the UK, and I have only used stories that appeared this year. I haven’t even begun to touch on the stories of people who have been attacked for not being white-able-heterosexual-males that survived. I haven’t even begun to talk about rape. I haven’t begun to talk about all of the people in other countries who have been targeted for being seen as “deviant”. I haven’t – because I can’t – talked about those people who have been killed, or attacked, or harrassed, whose stories haven’t made it into the news.

So many people have been hurt over the years, so many lives have been destroyed. So many of these victims will go unnoticed, unnamed, because this is so common. Because they’re not interesting enough to the mainstream (white-able-heterosexual-male) media. It happens to them because they are who they are. And then their experiences are not recognised, because they are who they are.

First, the runners up for Idiot of the Day; the person who found us by searching for:

“i have the right to be happy”

Um… yes. Yes you do. Did you want the Sheffield Fems to validate this statement? Consider it validated.

And the person who typed in:

“real bosum”

A word of warning – you might get better results if you either searched for “bosom”, or, if you’re of a nautical persuasion, “bosun”. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. (Pun most definitely intended!)

But the overall winner has to be the person who found this site by searching for:

From Cruella-Blog, and via the BBC, the news that possession of a license for one’s taxi does not, in fact, mean that the owner won’t also be in possession of “date-rape” drugs.

Are we surprised?

Well, no, not really. Because as Melissa points out, vocally and often, whether a woman is raped actually depends very little on what she does, where she goes, who she goes with or how she gets there. What the rape does depend on is the presence of a rapist.

Maybe I should get a copy of one of the papers running this story and keep it handy for the next fool that says to me “you’re not walking home, are you?”

“She doesn’t need holidays, food or rest and she will work almost 24 hours a day. She is the perfect woman.'”

The [male] inventor of the “fembot” (I kid you not) truly believes that the ‘perfect woman’ is an automaton without feelings or life?

Well, doesn’t that explain a lot?!

Oh, and also – “Mr Le denies he built his ‘partner’ for sex, although he does admit she could be programmed to climax.”

Uh huh. Sure. Even though the name you gave your robot means “love child”, even though you “never had time to find a human girlfriend”, even though “men want to touch her”, even though “she has a stunning figure… and can orgasm on demand”, you didn’t build her for sex.

How silly of me!

Also, as an aside, I’d like to give a dishonourable mention to The Metro for the assumption that their readers are only sexually interested in sex dolls women. And another mention for promoting that tired stereotype that real women ‘can’t do’ directions. All in the first paragraph.